subsist
by AGENT Kuma-chan
Summary: This wasn't so much living as surviving. -Katniss, Peeta, Gale, Haymitch


**Title:** Subsist

 **Character/Pairing:** Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Gale

 **A/N:** I really, really can't picture Katniss having kids. And so I am correcting the ending of the series—this all takes place after everyone moves back to district 12.

 **Summary:** _This wasn't so much living as surviving._

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There was an explosion. A rush of sound and then an absence of colour.

Katniss reached out, across the screen, across time, her fingers just missing Prim's.

-x-

"You have to get up," her mother said. Her voice was weak, as though she could only muster the energy to speak.

And if she could barely function, how was Katniss supposed to move?

She didn't have Prim to protect this time.

"Katniss," her mother repeated, tiredly.

Opening her eyes, Katniss stared up at the ceiling. Slowly, she sat up.

"Is this what it was like?" Katniss asked.

Her mother stopped moving. Almost stopped breathing, as though remembering her father's death was too much right now.

And it probably was.

"Yes." Her mother's voice was a soft whisper, barely audible.

Katniss looked at her hands, clenching them. "I understand now."

She had never known that sorrow could be so deep, so wide. All she could see is darkness, as dark as a starless sky.

"I had hoped you never would."

-x-

Katniss woke up in a panic, almost falling out of bed before she realized where she was. Peeta's arm was warm over her chest and she raised her left hand in the pale moonlight.

Just what was she doing? The ring sat heavy on her finger, filled with obligations and promises she would never be able to keep. Even now, she had an urge to flee the room, his heat suffocating her.

Shifting, she turned and moved her head onto his chest. His heart beat slowly under her ear, a sign of life, and she closed her eyes.

-x-

"It's strange," Haymitch muttered, looking out the window. In the aftermath of it all, they were still staying in the victor's circle. At least temporarily, until housing and other needs were sorted out. "I didn't think I'd be back here again."

Katniss looked out as well, the sight both familiar and foreign. She hadn't stayed here long enough before everything went down to get used to the view. "Me neither."

Haymitch chuckled. "And I thought we'd die back then." He shook his head. "To think we'd see a day like this."

"A day where you don't even touch the bottle anymore," Katniss added with a sly smile, her tone teasing. "It is a miracle."

Haymitch snorted. "A day where the great Katniss is getting married. _That_ is the miracle. After all that coaxing and that shitty excuse for acting before, when did you actually fall in love with him?"

"Love?" Katniss frowned, shaking her head. "I...I don't...it's not love."

It could never be love. Love was Primrose, was her laughter and her kindness, was the soft look on her face when she was trying to heal someone.

It was Primrose, not her, who dreamed of marriage and all its trappings.

But she was dead and Katniss was alive and none of that was right.

"Then why are you getting married?" Haymitch asked, confused. Leaning forward, he looked into her eyes. "Does he know?"

"Yes."

Katniss didn't have it in her to love someone so deeply again.

-x-

No, it was not love that lead to her sleeping next to Peeta every night, that lead to her living with him for the rest of her life.

It was the way he looked at her. There was darkness in his eyes sometimes, a deep wound that could not be healed. Not quickly, at least, and not entirely. They'd lie there some nights, just listening to each other breathe as they remembered.

As they tried to forget.

It was not love she needed. It was understanding.

-x-

On the bad days, when Peeta couldn't recognize her, when she couldn't bear to look at the world, they'd stay in opposite sides of the house and ignore each other.

"Peeta?" Katniss came down the stairs, surprised by how silently he had gotten up that morning. He was hunched over in the kitchen, his back to her, and she called out again. "Peeta?"

"Katniss…" Peeta turned around, his face unrecognizable from the baker boy she knew. His expression was murderous, his lips curled in a snarl.

Without another word, she ran.

-x-

"I'm sorry," he apologized endlessly two days later. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry."

"It's nothing," she repeated. It had just been a Bad Day, one in a string of many.

"I'm fine, it's ok, you didn't do anything this time."

-x-

"No."

"Why?" Peeta asked, confused. "Just one kid, even."

"Do you think we can handle one? The way we are now?"

Peeta bit his lip, he couldn't argue that. "Then after, when we're...better. More in control. What about then?"

"Not even then." Katniss dug her nails into her arm. It was irrational, her fears, she knew. The games were over. Her children would never have to face that.

Yet still the fear was there. It had a stranglehold over her.

"Why not?"

" _No_ ," Katniss repeated, snarling the words. Her eyes flashed, lightning and fire, and this was the one thing she would never back down on.

She could not have children. She _would_ not have children.

Katniss turned and left, ending the discussion. Grabbing her coat, she headed to the woods, the one place he wouldn't follow.

The one place she didn't want to go.

(And if she let herself think about, children were a Gale, a Prim thing. But she didn't want to think about them. It hurt too much.)

-x-

She went to the forest just once, after it all went down. It used to give her a sense of peace and she tried now to find solace in the quiet.

Her arrows and bow were left behind. Katniss couldn't hunt, the action tainted by the Games. Even gripping her father's bow reminded her of the sickening crunch of killing another.

Gale's bow had been next to it and she had to resist the urge to destroy it.

She passed by the rock, their old meeting spot. Passed by the meadow where they laid snares, the pond they fished in, the bush she fell into one time while climbing. Gale had laughed until she had pushed him into the creek.

There was too much Gale in these woods, too many memories of the boy she used to call friend.

(And she couldn't, she refused to think of him like that, like a friend, like a good person, like anything but a killer.)

She put his ghost with Prim's and tried not to suffocate under the weight.

-x-

"I haven't seen you in a while, Katniss," Gale's mother said, waving her down.

Katniss swallowed, trying to remember how to breathe.

"I guess you've been busy." She smiled at her, shifting her bag in her arms. "Gale too—I haven't seen him in a year! Do you know what's gotten into that boy? He just left so suddenly, without a word of explanation."

"...no…" Katniss looked away. "Not really."

"Oh, too bad. I thought he'd have told you, if anyone." She frowned, shaking her head. "Well, either way, you should visit more. The kids miss you."

She smiled and Katniss tried not to cry. There was too much Gale in her features, too much Gale in all of his siblings. She could see it in the way they moved, in the way they thought.

It was too easy to imagine forgiving him and she couldn't do that—he should have known what his plans were going to be used for, he should have known.

(She should have stopped Prim, she should have kept her home, she should have been smarter.)

"I'll think about it," she lied.

-x-

"So you're here too?" Katniss said, crouching down to face the cat. Buttercup was curled in front of the gravestone.

He lifted his head and gave her a tired stare. She had barely seen him since Prim's death and only in those rare times the cat was sad.

She picked him up and he shivered uncontrollably. He was overly affectionate, curling into her and mewing plaintively.

"I know, I know. I miss her too."

-x-

"I'm surprised you invited me," Gale said, watching her from the corner of his eyes. Even now, six years later, she could still read his motions like it was second nature.

"I didn't think I would either." Katniss shrugged, stroking Buttercup. "I didn't think you'd even come back here."

"I...I wanted to see my family again," he said slowly, as though he wasn't sure he could talk about them.

"You shouldn't have left them."

"I couldn't stay with them." Gale clenched his hands, but without any of the anger she was used to. "I just...I couldn't stop seeing that explosion."

Katniss looked away. She still dreamt it, every night. Those final moments, imagined as they were.

Prim screamed her name before the flames took her. She was sure of it.

"I had to sort myself out." If she looked at him, really looked at him, she could see what the past few years have done to him. There are lines on his face that weren't there before and white hairs that came too early.

She saw the same thing when she looked in the mirror, when she looked at Peeta.

And maybe Gale had suffered more than she thought.

"I couldn't forgive you." In a sense, she still couldn't. His name was forever linked with that explosion.

"I couldn't forgive myself either."

They sat there in silence, watching Peeta paint. On the sunny days he liked to sit in the garden and capture the moment before it disappeared.

"You can visit."

Gale snapped his head to stare at her, surprised. And to be honest, had it been a year ago, even a few months ago, she would never have said that. She wouldn't even be having this conversation.

But he had changed. She had to, she hoped. Maybe gotten a little stronger, a little happier.

"It was too easy to hate you." Katniss smiled bitterly. Her mind knew he didn't know, he wouldn't have done it if he had known. Her heart argued otherwise. "But...you loved Prim too."

"She was a sister to me." He looked down, rubbing the tears from his eyes as he spoke. She pretended not to notice. "I...I would never have...had I known...I…"

"I know." And it was not forgiveness, it never could be. But it was something new, something forward. "Prim would have been angry with me for taking this long."

Gale muffled a sob in his hands and maybe he needed this too. This not-forgiveness. This tepid kindness. She watched Peeta while she waited for Gale to collect himself. He looked up from his easel, smiling brightly. It was a Good day then. Maybe he'd even bake some bread later.

"So…" His voice was still hoarse from crying. "What have you been doing?"

Katniss gave a wan smile. "Surviving. It's all I know."


End file.
